Michael Abrash, John Carmack and John Cash
We were in Quake development. It was at the beginning when things were going smoothly, not the last seven months that turned work into a very dark place (from December 1995 on). But, I digress.
Michael Abrash, the legendary programmer, was working at id and occupying the space where Tom Hall, followed by Sandy Petersen, resided – out in the open in the black id cube building in Mesquite, Texas. One day, Michael had a visitor by the name of Ken Demarest. Ken has been in the game industry for many years, starting in 1990 at Origin Systems, and who, eight years after this story, worked at my Ion Storm Austin office.
Ken Demarest
Ken and Michael were talking about old games. Little-known to many, Michael Abrash co-programmed the PC game, Snack Attack II, with his friend Dan Illowsky, who was already a well-known Apple II programmer due to Snack Attack’s popularity as a great Pac-Man clone.
Michael was talking about Snack Attack II, published in 1982, and Ken said, “Oh, we’re gonna start bringing up old games, eh?” Of course, anyone talking about old games has my interest, so I came out of my office and exclaimed surprise at learning that Michael had programmed Snack Attack II with the added surprise that I had no idea there was a sequel to the Apple II version!
Ken then mentioned the old Ultimas, and I replied that I had played all of them and beaten 1 through 5 (Ultima 8 had been released the year before, in 1994). I told Ken, “Look, pulling out Ultima as an old game to impress me doesn’t work because it’s too big and popular. Everyone knows about Ultima. Have you ever heard of The Tarturian? Now that’s a rare game!”
Ken hadn’t heard of The Tarturian, so I told him a little bit about it. I said I had a metric ton of Apple II games and knew them all very well. Then, the following exchange happened:
Ken: “You know, I’d be really impressed if you had The Bilestoad.”
Me: “I have it.”
Ken: “I mean the original retail version.”
Me: “I have the original 1982 gold label retail floppy.”
Ken: “Seriously? I’d be really impressed if you had it here.”
Me: “I do. In fact, I am going to blow you away. Right now, in my office, The Bilestoad is currently running on my Apple IIe.”
Ken: “Seriously? Holy shit, I gotta see this!”
Ken follows me into my office, and on my original computer desk from 1985, was my Apple IIe with The Bilestoad running in demo mode – silicon knights hacking away at each other with digital axes, replete with pixelated blood spilling on the green field.
Ken: “Now that is impressive.”
Food for thought: Why did I have my Apple IIe running that day, and why did I put in The Bilestoad and leave it running in demo mode? Ken is the one who brought the game up, not me.
My life is full of seemingly impossible coincidences.
History Lesson: The Bilestoad was Marc Goodman’s hack-em-up Apple II action game that became a classic because of its violence and bloodshed. The game was so controversial that Marc used a nom de plume, Mangrove Earthshoe, so he could continue publishing games under his name free of stigma due to The Bilestoad. Unfortunately, this was his last game.
It’s hard to detect, but Marc was attempting to play the song “Fur Elise” while simultaneously running a game. On the Apple II, this was one of the most difficult programming tasks, and very few programmers got it working right. The absolute master of this technique was Jim Nitchals, triumphantly displayed in his 1982 game Microwave.
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I really wish I still had my Apple IIe. We donated it to the local church after we got our first “real” PC in 1995. Many people I have talked to don’t believe it even existed. I wish I had more money for games back when I had it though. Fantastic little dip into history though, Thanks John!
Haha, I love completely weird coincidences.
Wow! that brings back memories of trading floppies with my friends in middle school! The Bilestoad was one of my favorite Apple II games along with Amazon, Mask of the Sun, Load Runner, and Ironsides. Cool blast from the past man!
Nice coincidence, but I’d rather learn something more about the dark time from December 1995 on.
Bilestoad!
Other than the blood and the music, the feature I remember the most was the time-slicing competitive mode where the game took turns displaying you and then your opponent. You had to remember what you were doing / look at the minimap on the side of the screen.
And then, panning over to display both combatants at the same time when you got close (and the tension ramping up when the music stopped).
My brother and I played it a ton. Pretty damn awesome.
By any chance have you spoken to Marc Goodman about the fact you had a copy of his game? At some point an interview was done and at that time he hadn’t spoken to anyone who had an official copy of the game. I’m sure he’d be excited to know you actually acquired a copy!
Long after we’d played it to death and beyond, Bilestoad had a huge resurgence for us when the Apple IIGS came out, since the framerate nearly tripled. Death and dismemberment at like 10 frames per second, man! Now that’s real-time.
Marc also wrote the first game I ever personally purchased (the rest had either been gifts or payment for work done), Space Warrior. I still have the original disk, but there wasn’t a box as it came in a zip lock baggie – Broderbund was a much different company at that time!
I also tried to find Marc a publisher for his Mac OS version of The Bilestoad in the mid nineties, unfortunately without any luck … it was great, but the market had become pretty jaded to the tech level used by the game (in large part due to Quake, of course).
PS: Space Warrior had some really great copy protection in it, including loading the boot code into the video memory space, and in the final stage of protection a note that read something like “If you’ve gotten this far, congratulations!”. Not sure if Marc would consider it so, but the actual code was very object oriented, between this and Apple’s file utility program I learned and had started writing object oriented code before I even know the term (mid-80s)…in 6502 assembler.
-lane
You can now play The Bilestoad in your web browser in a java Apple II emulator at http://www.virtualapple.org/J_bilestoaddisk.html . You can thank me later.
Bilestoad was, I think, the greatest action game for the Apple II. There were SO many great games for that platform that it’s actually very difficult to choose between them but I think that one was pretty much the best of the action games. It had an incredibly evil feel to it somehow.
Very funny story, John, and I’m not surprised somehow to see that you played and were influenced by one of my favorite games of all time.
True story…
For the username I just used the escape key, and wrote down the level codes. Turns out the highest level’s code was PMO. I remembered this as “escape from PMO”
That was when I was in my early teens, if then. I had no idea how prescient “escape from PMO” would be as, years later, in order to just get ‘er dun, I found myself having to invent ways to appease, get around, or ignore an insidious department of “best practice” people within Project Management Office of my employer!